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By Root 1004 0

a notoriously violent and vengeful native (and not rich, to be fair), fired by his employers at the riverboat line for brawling, latched on to a Western archaeologist, in the hopes of being present when something worth stealing was found. When the expedition faltered, he left to join a different one. When he later learnt, perhaps from gossip in Carter’s camp following Carter’s visit to Trilipush’s site, that the failed expedition he’d abandoned had suddenly turned wildly successful, the murderer returned and spied the loot guarded by two men, one of whom was injured no less. At some point between my interview with Trilipush on the 30th and the morning of the 1st, when they were due to take the riverboat north, this Egyptian had ambushed Finneran and Trilipush, murdered them, burnt their clothes, dispatched the bodies, and hidden the treasure. Had he not been so foolish as to hold on to a gramophone and the cigars, mere knickknacks compared to his hidden loot, he might’ve escaped justice. That he’d required confederates for his crimes—especially the transport and stashing of vast treasures—cannot be denied. But deny it he did.

But why would the killer deny it to the very end, even when a lengthy prison term was facing him? Well, the history of Egyptology, I learnt from a fellow in a club back in Cairo, is filled with stories like this: the modern Egyptian, with no real interest in the historical aspect of this underground gold, only cares about it as money. Native families often clandestinely dug up and slowly sold (sometimes over generations) these archaeological treasures, which they viewed (considering what they saw as the Western mania for them) as underground bank accounts to be disbursed as necessary. Trilipush’s killer willingly went to prison to protect friends and family planning to support themselves over years by slowly dribbling out through trusted fences the vast funereal treasures of King Atum-hadu.

And, on the train from Cairo to Alexandria, my assistant Macy and I discussed another question: just who should have had the treasure of Atum-hadu? Did it belong to Trilipush, who killed Paul Caldwell and Hugo Marlowe for it? Or Chester Crawford Finneran, who paid for Trilipush’s discovery? Or Julius Padraig O’Toole, who had loaned Finneran that money? Or the next of kin of Paul Davies-Caldwell and Hugo Marlowe? Hector Marlowe and Emma Hoyt? I suppose the heirs of this Egyptian killer had as much claim to it as anyone else in this dirty business, and I wasn’t much interested in spurring the authorities to pursue them, trying to shake the tree until the confederates fell to the ground. Yet again, mere money had driven men mad, as it always does, and in the end, the cost was four dead bodies, one abandoned young woman, a man in prison, and heartbreak stretching from Sydney to Luxor to London to Boston. Money’s an accelerating motivator, Macy, and when it begins to drive men, it tends to drive them right over a cliff.

I collected my fees and expenses, of course, from my clients—the Davies Estate, Tommy Caldwell, Ronald Barry, Emma Hoyt, the Marlowes, O’Toole—reported to them as much as I could of what they needed to know, and I was back home in Sydney by late July 1923, a little more than a year after I’d left. There wasn’t, in the end, much coverage of the case, just the Luxor Times. I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed at this curious indifference of the World Press.

Justice was served, though, the truth was laid bare, those who’d sinned were punished. For me, of course, it’d been the adventure of a lifetime, one of the most remarkable cases of my career, the fruit of all my powers of deduction and detection at their prime. I’d travelled the globe, entered the homes of the wealthy and powerful, seen men and women in all walks of life motivated by those universal impulses that guide every last one of us, and I was never, when I reflected on what I saw, truly surprised, not truly. When you understand them, people can’t surprise you, you see. Their motives are sometimes hidden, but they’re not numerous. People are open